Greek language

Greek (, IPA - "Hellenic") is an Indo-European language with a documented history of 3,500 years, the longest in the Indo-European family if the Anatolian languages are excluded. Today, it is spoken by approximately 15 million people in Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Italy and Turkey. There are also many Greek emigrant communities around the world (see Greek diaspora), such as those in Melbourne, Australia which has the third largest urban Greek population in the world, after Athens and Thessaloniki.

Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet (the first to introduce vowels), since the 9th century BC in Greece (before that in Linear B), and the 4th century BC in Cyprus (before that in Cypriot syllabary). Greek literature has a continuous history of nearly 3000 years.

History

This article does not cover the reconstructed history of Greek prior to the use of writing. For more information, see main article on Proto-Greek language.

Greek has been spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since the 2nd millennium BC. The earliest evidence of this is found in the Linear B tablets in the "Room of the Chariot Tablets", a LMII-context (c. 1500 BC) region of Knossos in Crete. The later Greek alphabet is unrelated to Linear B, and is believed to be derived from the Phoenician alphabet (abjad); with minor modifications, it is still used today. Greek is conventionally divided into the following periods:

Mycenaean Greek: the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 16th century BC onwards.
Classical Greek (also known as Ancient Greek): In its various dialects was the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of Greek civilization. It was widely known throughout the Roman empire. Classical Greek fell into disuse in western Europe in the Middle Ages, but remained known in the Byzantine world, and was reintroduced to the rest of Europe with the Fall of Constantinople and Greek migration to Italy.
Hellenistic Greek (also known as Koine Greek): The fusion of various ancient Greek dialects with Attic (the dialect of Athens) resulted in the creation of the first common Greek dialect, which gradually turned into one of the world's first international languages. Koine Greek can be initially traced within the armies and conquered territories of Alexander the Great, but after the Hellenistic colonisation of the known world, it was spoken from Egypt to the fringes of India. After the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial diglossy of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. Through Koine Greek it is also traced the origin of Christianity, as the Apostles used it to preach in Greece and the Greek-speaking world. It is also known as the Alexandrian dialect, Post-Classical Greek or even New Testament Greek (after its most famous work of literature).
Medieval Greek: The continuation of Hellenistic Greek during medieval Greek history as the official and vernacular (if not the literary nor the ecclesiastic) language of the Byzantine Empire, and continued to be used until, and after the fall of that Empire in the 15th century. Also known as Byzantine Greek.
Modern Greek: Stemming independently from Koine Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the late Byzantine period (as early as 11th century).

Two main forms of the language have been in use since the end of the medieval Greek period: Dhimotikí (Δημοτική), the Demotic (vernacular) language, and Katharévusa (Καθαρεύουσα), an imitation of classical Greek, which was used for literary, juridic, administrative and scientific purposes during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This diglossia problem was brought to an end in 1977, when Dhimotikí was declared the official language of Greece.

In the meantime, both forms of Greek had naturally converged and Standard Modern Greek (Κοινή Νεοελληνική - Common Modern Greek), the form of Greek used for all official purposes and in education in Greece today, emerged.

It has been claimed that an "educated" speaker of the modern language can understand an ancient text, but this is surely as much a function of education as of the similarity of the languages. Still, Koinē, the version of Greek used to write the New Testament and the Septuagint, is relatively easy to understand for modern speakers.

Greek words have been widely borrowed into the European languages: astronomy, democracy, philosophy, thespian, etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as a basis for coinages: anthropology, photography, isomer, biomechanics etc. and form, with Latin words, the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary. See English words of Greek origin, and List of Greek words with English derivatives.

Classification

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient languages which were probably most closely related to it, ancient Macedonian (which may have been a dialect of Greek) and Phrygian, are not well enough documented to permit detailed comparison. Among living languages, Armenian seems to be the most closely related language.

Geographic distribution

Modern Greek is spoken by about 15 million people mainly in Greece and Cyprus. There are also Greek-speaking populations in Georgia, Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey, Albania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Southern Italy. The language is spoken also in many other countries where Greeks have settled, including Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Official status

Greek is the official language of Greece where it is spoken by about 99.5% of the population. It is also, alongside Turkish, the official language of Cyprus. Due to the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the 20 official languages of the European Union.

Phonology

This section generally describes the post-Classic phonology of the Greek language. See Ancient Greek phonology, History of the Greek language and Iotacism for historical issues.

All phonetic transcriptions in this section use the International Phonetic Alphabet

Vowel sounds

Greek has 5 vowel phonemes:

	Front	Back
Close
Mid
Open

Close vowels, when found in unstressed final syllables, tend to be voiceless, particularly if they are between voiceless consonants φάσης → (→ ) = "of phase" (genitive case).

Consonants

Greek has a repertoire of 29 consonant sounds. The number of phonemes depends on the analysis, but may be as few as 15, assuming for example that the sound ^* is represented in the underlying form as /mp/, which is also its standard orthographic representation. (cf. Newton)

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive
Nasal
Trill
Fricative
Affricate
Approximant
Lateral approximant

Greek , and are not aspirated as they are in English. They tend to be voiced to , and in the Cretan dialect. The letter <ρ> is generally pronounced , but tends to be pronounced in intervocalic position.

Standard Modern Greek does not have double consonants within words, although some dialects (notably Cypriot) do.

Sandhi rules

Greek has certain sandhi rules, some represented in the orthography, some not.

/n/ before bilabials and velars becomes ^* and respectively, and is written <μ> (συμπάθεια, "sympathy") and <γ> (συγκρητισμός, "syncretism"). Before the labiodental fricatives <φ> and <β>, it is also written <μ>, but pronounced (συμφωνία, "symphony").

The combination <μπ> is pronounced after vowels (but often reduced to ) and everywhere else . In some words, especially in Northern dialects, this can also be pronounced .

After vowels, the combinations <γγ> and <γκ> are pronounced (or before the front vowels and ), but are often reduced to (or ) in everyday speech. <γκ> is always pronounced (or ) at the beginning of a word, while <γγ> never occurs in this position.

The combination <ντ> is pronounced after vowels (but often reduced to ) and everywhere else . In some words, especially in Northern dialects, this can also be pronounced .

The sounds and , before the front vowels and , are palatalized, becoming and . In some dialects, notably those of Crete and the Mani, they become and .

The word (estí, IPA ), which means "is" in Ancient Greek (q.v. Modern Greek είναι), gains a "euphonic" n. in Modern Greek, the negative adverb δεν and the accusative articles τον and την lose the final , depending on the beginning letter of the next word (if it's a consonant, is usually dropped). In the phrase δεν πειράζει, which means "it doesn't matter", instead of being dropped, n is assimilated into the second word and, following the example above, np is pronounced ^* in Northern Greece and in Southern Greece, thus being pronounced or .

Some of these rules are optional, and reflect the formality of speech. While everyday spoken Greek sounds artificial if the sandhi rules are not used, a formal or official speech may sound equally awkward if sandhi rules are used.

Orthography

The Greek vowel letters with their pronunciation are: <α> , <ε> , <η> , <ι> , <ο> , <υ> , <ω> . There are also vowel digraphs which are phonetically monophthongal: <αι> , <ει> , <οι> , <ου> , <υι> . The three digraphs <αυ>, <ευ> and <ηυ> are pronounced , and except when followed by unvoiced consonants, in which case they are pronounced , and .

Modern Greek has also four diphthongs: <αη> (or <άη>) , <αϊ> (or <άι>) , <οη> (or <όη>) and <οϊ> (or <όι>) (diphthongs can better be transcribed using the IPA non-syllabic diacritic under instead of the approximant ).

The Greek letters <β> and <δ> are pronounced and respectively. The letter <γ> is generally pronounced , but before the mid or close front vowels, it is pronounced (or in some dialects, notably those of Crete and the Mani).

The letters <θ>, <φ> and <χ> are pronounced , and . The letter <χ>, before mid or close front vowels, is pronounced (or in some dialects, notably those of Crete and the Mani). The letter <ξ> stands for and <ψ> stands for . The digraphs <γγ> and <γκ> are generally pronounced in everyday speech, but are pronounced before the front vowels and . When these digraphs are preceded by a vowel, they are pronounced in formal speech ( before the front vowels and . The digraph <γγ> may be pronounced in some words ( before the front vowels and .

Grammar

Modern Greek is still largely a synthetic language. It is one of the few Indo-European languages that has retained a synthetic passive. Noticeable changes in grammar (compared to classical Greek) include the loss of the dative, the optative mood, the infinitive, the dual number, and the participles (except the past participle); the adoption of the gerund; the reduction in the number of noun declensions, and the number of distinct forms in each declension; the adoption of the modal particle ' (a contraction of ' > ' > ' > ) to denote future and conditional tenses; the introduction of auxiliary verb forms for certain tenses; the extension to the future tense of the aspectual distinction between present/imperfect and aorist; the loss of the third person imperative, and the simplification of the system of grammatical prefixes, such as augmentation and reduplication. Some of these features are shared with other languages spoken in the Balkan peninsula (see Balkan linguistic union).

Due to the influence of katharevousa, however, demotic is not commonly used in its purest form, and archaisms are still widely used, especially in writing and in more formal speech, as well as in a few everyday expressions like the dative ('OK', literally 'in order') or the third person imperative ! ('long live!').

Writing system

Modern Greek is written in the late Ionic variant of the Greek alphabet. It is regarded as the first alphabet in the narrow sense, giving full representation to vowels on a par with consonants, unlike its predecessor, the Phoenician alphabet (also called an "abjad"). Its oldest discovered inscriptions date to the 8th or 9th Century BC. It assumed its final form in Athens in 403 BC, and displaced other regional variants due to its use for the Attic Koine dialect during the Hellenistic era.

The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with a capital and lowercase (small) form: Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ ς (word-final form), Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω.

In addition to the letters of the alphabet, Greek has a number of diacritical signs, most of which were eliminated from official use in Greece in 1982 as no longer corresponding to the modern pronunciation of the language. See Monotonic orthography for the simplified modern set, and Polytonic orthography for the traditional set.

Examples

Some common words and phrases

Greek (man): Έλληνας, IPA //
Greek (woman): Ελληνίδα //
Greek (language): Ελληνικά //
hello: γεια // (informal, literally "health"). More formal: χαίρετε //.
good morning: καλημέρα //
good evening: καλησπέρα //
good night: καληνύχτα //
good-bye: χαίρετε // (formal), αντίο // (semi-formal), γεια σου // or γεια σας // (informal)
please: παρακαλώ //
I would like ____ please: θα ήθελα ____ παρακαλώ //
sorry: συγγνώμη //
thank you: σ' ευχαριστώ //
that: αυτό //, εκείνο //
this: αυτό //, (ε)τούτο //
how much?: πόσο; //
how much does it cost?: πόσο κοστίζει; //
yes: ναι //
no: όχι //
I don't understand: δεν καταλαβαίνω // (sandhi - see above) or //
I don't know: δεν ξέρω // (sandhi - see above) or //
where's the bathroom?: πού είναι η τουαλέτα /το μπάνιο /το λουτρό; //
generic toast (literally "to health"): εις υγείαν! //
juice: χυμός //
water: νερό //
wine: κρασί //
beer: μπύρα //
milk: γάλα //
Do you speak English?: Μιλάτε Αγγλικά; //
I love you: σ' αγαπώ //
Help!: Βοήθεια! //
You are a doll!: Εìσαι κουκλíτσα! //

References

Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar, Harvard University Press, 1956 (revised edition), ISBN 0674362500. The standard grammar of classical Greek. Focuses primarily on the Attic dialect, with comparatively weak treatment of the other dialects and the Homeric Kunstsprache.
W. Sidney Allen, Vox Graeca - a guide to the pronunciation of classical Greek. Cambridge University Press, 1968-74. ISBN 052120626X
Geoffrey Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers (Longman Linguistics Library). Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1997. ISBN 0582307090. From Mycenean to modern.
Andrew Sihler, "A New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin", Oxford University Press, 1996. An historical grammar of ancient Greek from its Indo-European origins. Some eccentricities and no bibliography but a useful handbook to the earliest stages of Greek's development.
Robert Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition 1983, ISBN 0521299780. An excellent and concise historical account of the development of modern Greek from the ancient language.
Brian Newton, The Generative Interpretation of Dialect: A Study of Modern Greek Phonology, Cambridge University Press, 1972, ISBN 0521084970.
Crosby and Schaeffer, An Introduction to Greek, Allyn and Bacon, Inc. 1928. A school grammar of ancient Greek
David Holton et al., Greek: A Comprehensive Grammar of the Modern Language, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 041510002X. A reference grammar of modern Greek.
Dionysius of Thrace, "Art of Grammar", "Τέχνη γραμματική", c.100 BC

External links

General background

Modern Greek, Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Brian Joseph
Ancient Greek, Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Brian Joseph
Greek Language, Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.
The Perseus Project has many useful pages for the study of classical languages and literatures, including dictionaries.
The Greek Language and Linguistics Gateway Useful information on the history of the Greek language, application of modern Linguistics to the study of Greek, and tools for learning Greek.

Language learning

General

Ancient and Modern Greek courses, in Greece.
Greek dictionary, tutorial and hangman program with texteditor This shareware program is aimed at learning New Testament Greek but fully functional for modern Greek too if one creates own glossaries.
Flash presentation with the sound of the letters of the Greek Alphabet
Free online resources for learners (both Ancient and Modern Greek)

Modern Greek

Learn Greek Online, Free modern Greek course with realaudio files.
FSI Greek Basic Course
Learn basic Greek words and phrases and the speeches of Xenophon Zolotas, Dr. Soukakos, Athnassopoulos and Kalaras
Learn how to count in Greek
Learn Greek - Official site of the Greek Institute of language and speech processing
Modern Greek and Albanian with Japanese translation
Online pdf versions of the books used in Elementary School Site in Greek only.

Ancient Greek including Koine (i.e. New Testament Greek)

A supplement to the Thrasymachus (Ancient Greek) Part of the VRoma Project.
Learn Ancient Greek at Textkit. Free downloadable Ancient Greek grammars and readers.
Free lessons in ancient Greek, including an introduction the special features of Greek
The Greek Language and Linguistics Gateway Provided as a free service to facilitate the study of Ancient Greek and to promote the application of methodologies from the field of Linguistics to the study of Classical and Hellenistic Greek.
New Testament Greek Three graduated courses in New Testament Greek

Dictionaries

Literature

uox antiqua- Ancient Greek Literature and Music.
Page about modern Greek Literature

Typography

Athena, public domain polytonic Greek font
Gentium — a typeface for the nations, a freely available font including polytonic Greek support
Generator for Greek typographical filler text

Lexica

Translatum - The Greek Translation Vortal. An extended list of searchable and downloadable Greek dictionaries.
Modern Greek–English, English–Modern Greek dictionary. (Basic dictionary)
Ancient Greek Dictionary, the complete Liddell-Scott dictionary, including search within English definitions.
Greek–English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
Woodhouse English-Greek dictionary, scanned images from S.C. Woodhouse's 1910 dictionary.

Spell checkers

^* - Greek Spell Checker.

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